What is a Semordnilap?

Although is sounds like a Swedish dish, a semordnilap is a word, phrase, or sentence that can be read in reverse with a different meaning. An example of a semordnilap is “evil / live.” But perhaps the most well-known example of a semordnilap is: “dog / god” — the subject of much philosophical pondering.

The word, a reverse spelling of “palindromes,” was coined by C. C. Bombaugh and Martin Gardner in 1961. That detail is found in a note on page 345 of Oddities and Curiosities of Words and Literature (1961, Dover Publications), written by Gardner: “The term ‘semordnilap’ (palindromes spelled backwards) has been proposed for words that spell different words in reverse. An example pointed out by Lewis Carroll in his novel Sylvie and Bruno is the word evil, which is live backward. Other examples are straw, stop, maps, bard, strap, reknits, lamina, deliver, son (see James Joyce’s Ulysses, Random House edition, page 584), dessert, devil, mood, repaid.”

So how is a semordnilap different than a palindrome? Although they are related, a semordnilap is different from a palindrome because the word or phrase that is formed from the reverse spelling has an entirely different meaning; in a palindrome the meaning is exactly the same if read in either direction. For example, the palindrome “Madam I’m Adam” reads the same backward as forward. Palindromic words like noon, civic, radar, level, and madam all have the same meaning spelled backward and forward.

Willard Espy, a clever passionate word-lover, wrote several books on wordplay. One of his most popular works, The Game of Words (published in 1971, and republished in a new edition in 1980) lists the definition of semordnilap on page 185: “Semordnilap is ‘palindromes’ spelled backwards, and stands for words that spell different words in reverse. Some examples: devil, repaid, stressed, rewarder, straw, maps, strap, reknits, deliver, bard, and doom.” More recently, Anu Garg, creator of the Word A Day website and author of A Word A Day (2003), has an entire chapter on semordnilaps. On page 66, Garg writes: ” Desserts is an example of a reversible word, which when read from the right yields another word… Another word for reversible words is semordnilap, a self-referential word coined by reversing the word palindromes.” Garg then presents five examples with detailed notes: avid, ogre, debut, nonet, and rebus.

For any major topic, you can be sure there is a specialized dictionary for it. For word puzzle and word-lovers, there are two respected dictionaries: Wordplay: A Curious Dictionary of Language Oddities by Chris Cole (1999) and The Dictionary of Wordplay by Dave Morice (2001). The second dictionary is considered the most, um… definitive. When you turn to the “S’ section, on page 185 you will find the following definition: “semordnilap: a synonym for REVERSAL. The term is the word palindromes spelled in reverse.” Now if you look up REVERSAL, this gets really curioser — not only do you get the definition, you also get the 18 synonyms. Yes, you read that correctly: eighteen. Here is Morice’s entry for reversal: “a word or phrase that spells another word or phrase in reverse… This wordplay form has had more names that any other. ‘Anagram’ oddly enough, was the original term. Other terms include: ananym, antigram, drow, half-palindrome, heterodrome, inversion, palinode, recurrent palindrome, retronym, reversagram, reversal pair, reversible, reversible anagram, reversion, semordnilap, sotadic palindrome, and word reversal.”